About 'The Hardest Day'
'Hardest Day Hurricanes' - About the Project
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Rack my brains though I did, I couldn’t see a theme to wrap such a series of paintings around. How many could I do? What exactly should I choose to paint? It seemed far too short a timescale to complete any decent number of paintings that would do any justice to the subject and yield a set of artworks that felt like a cohesive whole. Let alone to have enough time to do anything like the necessary research to find the stories which would give life to the paintings and deliver the standard of accuracy that they would deserve.
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Then followed the idea that finally had resonance - 18 paintings set on the 18th August 1940 ‘The Hardest Day’ in time for the anniversary on the 18th August 2020. Price’s work gave me lots of good direction and detail, which might also reduce the supplementary research to an achievable, if challenging level. Completing the paintings in time would need a higher output rate than I had yet achieved.By narrowing down the scope to focusing on the actions of the Hurricane Squadrons and accepting that some of the paintings would have to be smaller sizes, I finally had a project I could get my head around – “Hardest Day Hurricanes”
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It is a project I have loved doing. Despite Alfred Price’s excellent book, I totally underestimated the amount of research it would entail. Most of the hours I have had spare from actual painting have been devoted to poring over combat reports, maps and aerial photos.
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Despite the apparent focus of the art being the Hurricane aircraft, what really has shone through for me has been the human tale in every painting. Each represents a personal story or stories, that could stand for hundreds more like them. They are stories of immense courage and sacrifice. So many of the aircrew depicted lost their lives or suffered horrific injuries during the conflict and yet somehow faced down what must have been immeasurable fear many times a day, whilst also enduring immense tiredness and mental and emotional fatigue.
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We owe them a debt of gratitude for our freedom that can never be repaid. We can, however, continue to honour their memory, especially now as their personal stories fade from direct memory. I hope that in its own small way, this project helps contribute to this aim.